In a continuing effort to improve the quality of shipping fruits, I, the inventor, typically hybridize a large number of peach, nectarine, plum, apricot, and cherry seedlings each year. I also grow a lesser number of open pollinated seeds of each of these fruits. The present invention relates to a new and distinct variety of interspecific tree, which has been denominated varietally as ‘Sweetcot’.
During the 1996 blooming season I isolated as entire ‘Angeleno’ (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 2,747) plum tree by covering it with a plastic covered house. I placed a hive of bees inside the house and brought various bouquets of plum, apricot and plum-apricot interspecific trees to hybridize the ‘Angeleno’ plum tree. Upon the completion of the bloom, the house and bees were removed and the resulting fruit was allowed to ripen. Upon maturity, the fruit was harvested and their seeds were germinated and grown as seedlings on their own root in my greenhouse. Upon reaching dormancy that fall, the seedlings were transplanted to a cultivated area of my experimental orchard near Le Grand, Calif. in Merced County (San Joaquin Valley). The group of seedlings were labeled “House 8”. During the 2000 evaluation season, I selected the present variety as a single tree from the group of seedlings described above because the tree produced a heavy crop of firm fruit that was very sweet in flavor. The present variety exhibited several indications that it was itself an interspecific, such as pubescent skin, orange yellow flesh, and leaves resembling apricots. Subsequent to origination of the present interspecific tree, I asexually reproduced it by budding and grafting in the experimental orchard described above, and such reproduction of plant and fruit characteristics were true to the original plant in all respects. The reproduction of the variety included the use of ‘Nemaguard’ (unpatented) rootstock upon which the present variety was compatible and true to type.
The present variety is similar to its seed parent, ‘Angeleno’ (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 2,747), by being self-unfruitful and by producing fruit that is globose in shape, firm in texture, and dark purple to black in skin color, but is very distinguished therefrom by having apricot type leaves and blossoms and by producing fruit that has pubescent skin, that is orange yellow in flesh color, that is much sweeter in flavor, and that matures in late June rather than early September, or about seventy days earlier.